Search
Log in
  • Home

  • Categories

  • Audiobooks

  • E-books

  • Magazines

  • For kids

  • Top lists

  • Help

  • Download app

  • Use campaign code

  • Redeem gift card

  • Try free now
  • Log in
  • Language

    🇸🇪 Sverige

    • SE
    • EN

    🇧🇪 Belgique

    • FR
    • EN

    🇩🇰 Danmark

    • DK
    • EN

    🇩🇪 Deutschland

    • DE
    • EN

    🇪🇸 España

    • ES
    • EN

    🇫🇷 France

    • FR
    • EN

    🇳🇱 Nederland

    • NL
    • EN

    🇳🇴 Norge

    • NO
    • EN

    🇦🇹 Österreich

    • AT
    • EN

    🇨🇭 Schweiz

    • DE
    • EN

    🇫🇮 Suomi

    • FI
    • EN
  1. Books
  2. Historic and folklore novels
  3. Historic novels

Read and listen for free for 42 days!

Cancel anytime

Try free now
0.0(0)

Shame and the Captives : A Novel

“If the legendary Schindler’s List was not enough to showcase Thomas Keneally’s literary mastery, then [this novel] surely will” (New York Daily News) as the Booker Prize-winning author reimagines from all sides the drastic true events of the night more than one thousand Japanese POWs staged the largest and bloodiest prison escape of World War II.

Alice is living on her father-in-law’s farm on the edge of an Australian country town, while her husband is held prisoner in Europe. When Giancarlo, an Italian inmate at the prisoner-of-war camp down the road, is assigned to work on the farm, she hopes that being kind to him will somehow influence her husband’s treatment. What she doesn’t anticipate is how dramatically Giancarlo will change the way she understands both herself and the wider world.

What most challenges Alice and her fellow townspeople is the utter foreignness of the thousand-plus Japanese inmates and their deeply held code of honor, which the camp commanders fatally misread. Mortified by being taken alive in battle and preferring a violent death to the shame of living, the Japanese prisoners plan an outbreak with shattering and far-reaching consequences for all the citizens around them.

In a career spanning half a century, Thomas Keneally has proven brilliant at exploring ordinary lives caught up in extraordinary events. With this profoundly gripping and thought-provoking novel, inspired by a notorious incident in New South Wales in 1944, he once again shows why he is celebrated as a writer who “looks into the heart of the human condition with a piercing intelligence that few can match” (Sunday Telegraph).


Author:

  • Thomas Keneally

Narrators:

  • Heather Bolton
  • Paul English

Format:

  • Audiobook
  • E-book

Duration:

  • 12 h 34 min
  • 271 pages

Language:

English

Categories:

  • Historic and folklore novels
  • Historic novels

More by Thomas Keneally

Skip the list
  1. Schindler's List

    Thomas Keneally

    audiobook
  2. Schindler's List

    Thomas Keneally

    audiobookbook
  3. The Dickens Boy: A Novel

    Thomas Keneally

    audiobook
  4. A Bloody Good Rant

    Thomas Keneally

    audiobook
  5. The Book of Science and Antiquities: A Novel

    Thomas Keneally

    audiobook
  6. The Daughters of Mars : A Novel

    Thomas Keneally

    book
  7. A Commonwealth of Thieves

    Thomas Keneally

    audiobook

Others have also read

Skip the list
  1. One Summer

    David Baldacci

    audiobook
  2. Nobody's Wife

    Laura Person

    audiobook
  3. A Respectable Trade

    Philippa Gregory

    audiobook
  4. The Last Daughter

    Nicola Cornick

    audiobook
  5. The Christmas Train : The Thrilling Yet Heart-warming Festive Tale from the Number One Bestselling Author

    David Baldacci

    audiobook
  6. The Testament of Caspar Schultz

    Jack Higgins

    audiobook
  7. Scandals

    Penny Jordan

    audiobook
  8. Traces of Her

    Amanda Brittany

    audiobook
  9. Summer at Conwenna Cove : A heart-warming, feel-good holiday romance set in Cornwall

    Darcie Boleyn

    audiobook
  10. The House Beneath the Cliffs : the most uplifting novel about second chances you'll read this year

    Sharon Gosling

    audiobook
  11. London’s Late Night Scandal

    Anabelle Bryant

    audiobook
  12. How To Save a Life

    Kristin Harmel

    audiobookbook

  • 8 books

    Thomas Keneally

    Thomas Keneally began his writing career in 1964 and has published thirty-three novels since, most recently Crimes of the Father, Napoleon’s Last Island, Shame and the Captives, and the New York Times bestselling The Daughters of Mars. He is also the author of Schindler’s List, which won the Booker Prize in 1982, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Gossip from the Forest, and Confederates, all of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has also written several works of nonfiction, including his boyhood memoir Homebush Boy, The Commonwealth of Thieves, and Searching for Schindler. He is married with two daughters and lives in Sydney, Australia.

    Read more

Help and contact


About us

  • Our story
  • Career
  • Press
  • Accessibility
  • Partner with us
  • Investor relations
  • Instagram
  • Facebook

Explore

  • Categories
  • Audiobooks
  • E-books
  • Magazines
  • For kids
  • Top lists

Popular categories

  • Crime
  • Biographies and reportage
  • Fiction
  • Feel-good and romance
  • Personal development
  • Children's books
  • True stories
  • Sleep and relaxation

Nextory

Copyright © 2025 Nextory AB

Privacy Policy · Terms ·
Excellent4.3 out of 5